Yellow-Eyed Child

This is our submission to the OST Composing Jam #4. The theme is Runaway. 

 You can listen to it on SoundCloud.

We imagined a game in which a newborn named Helios is chosen to be sacrificed to the gods because of his unique bright yellow eyes. His sister Selene can’t accept that and takes him away and the soundtrack follows them on their journey in the forest surrounding the village.

The soundtrack was composed entirely by @LightBluePianist with minor suggestions from @Jackaljkdan on Waveform by playing a digital keyboard and playing a Sonic Energy Drum live, recorded and edited with Audacity. Playing this drum was really fun, I hope you enjoy!

We have chosen the names of the brothers because of their meaning in Greek, sun (Helios) and moon (Selene).

Here follows the complete story of the game:

A newborn named Helios is chosen to be sacrificed to the gods because of his unique bright yellow eyes. The village believes that the sacrifice of something so precious will surely grant them the favor they need in these times of hardship. The parents respect the traditions and accept the fate of their child, but his sister Selene cannot and takes him away with her in the nearby forest without anyone noticing.

While the forest looks peaceful and welcoming, it hides secrets and dangers. Selene wanders until she finds an old hermit that hears her story and decides to help her. He becomes a mentor for her and teaches Selene how to survive in the wilderness and how to fight. Meanwhile the warriors of the village are on their tracks, so they cannot stay in one place too long.

Eventually, the warriors find them and a conflict ensues. Selene and the hermit are bested while Helios cries. Once the warriors try to reach for him however, he looks at them with his bright yellow eyes and unleashes a great shockwave of energy. The warriors are knocked unconscious and the protagonists are able to escape.

After what happened Selene decides to leave the hermit and travel far away, to find a place where she and Helios can start a new life. Before they leave, the hermit performs a ritual initiation on Selene.

* How does it fit the theme?

The music tries to capture the mood of both the theme image and text. It’s evocative of and onomatopoeic with respect to the forest environment depicted in the theme image. The game and story are centered around both the picture and prompt as well and the soundtrack closely follows our story.

The main theme track is meant to represent the village during a festivity. The music gets darker when the elders decide that the sacrifice must be made.

* Credits

The image was made with Gimp editing the following images:
https://pixabay.com/vectors/forest-winter-tree-landscape-4824761/
https://pixabay.com/vectors/eye-look-iris-simple-old-runes-1292934/

The font is Shadows Into Light by Kimberly Geswein:
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Shadows+Into+Light

The game idea was conceived by @Jackaljkdan, who also created the cover image.